Tag Archives: libraries

Since its creation in 2011, D3.js has become the de facto standard for building complex data visualizations on the web. React is also quickly maturing as the library of choice for creating component-based user interfaces.
Both React and D3 are two excellent tools designed with goals that sometimes collide. Both take control of user interface elements, and they do so in different ways. How can we make them work together while optimizing for their distinct advantages according to your current project?

Component-based libraries or frameworks such as Vue have given us the wonderful ability to create reusable components to be spread throughout their respective application, ensuring that they are consistent, and (hopefully) simplifying how they are used.

In particular, form inputs tend to have plenty of complexity that you’d want to hide in a component, such as custom designs, labels, validation, help messages, and making sure each of these pieces are in the correct order so that they render correctly.

Editor’s Note: When it comes to elections, we are each given a choice in how to express our opinions and beliefs. Some designers and developers use their skills to further articulate their choice in one person. Here’s a glimpse into how Topple Trump!, an interactive responsive quiz game, was designed and built — combined with some valuable lessons learned along the way. This article is about techniques and strategies, so please avoid political flame in the comments.

Creating an online quiz that is simple to use, looks great and is really fun to play is one thing. Basing it on Donald Trump’s polarizing presidential campaign is another.

The brainchild of Parallax director and developer Andy Fitch, Topple Trump! has gone on to win numerous awards. But it was a real team effort that brought the game to life. Here’s a glimpse into precisely how that happened, touching on the development process, design considerations and some valuable lessons learned along the way.

The bar is set high for today’s mobile apps. First, apps must meet the standard of quality that app markets expect. Secondly, mobile app users are very demanding. Plenty of alternatives are available to download, so users will not tolerate a buggy app.

Because mobile apps have become such a crucial part of people’s lives, users won’t be shy about sharing their love or hate for an app — and that feedback gets in front of millions of users in seconds.

An increasingly large number of publicly available APIs provide powerful services to expand the functionality of our applications. WordPress is an incredibly dynamic and flexible CMS that powers everything from small personal blogs to major e-commerce websites and everything in between. Part of what makes WordPress so versatile is its powerful plugin system, which makes it incredibly easy to add functionality.

We will walk through how I made GitHub Pipeline, a plugin that allows you to display data from the GitHub API on WordPress pages using shortcodes. I’ll give specific examples and code snippets, but consider the technique described here a blueprint for how to consume any service API with a plugin. We’ll start from the beginning, but a degree of familiarity with WordPress and plugin development is assumed, and we won’t spend time on beginner topics, like installing WordPress or Composer.

In this tutorial, I will teach you how to work digitally on an image you draw by hand. You will learn two entirely different ways to work with the illustration: through the Live Trace Tool and the Pen Tool. Two ways, two results. Learn how to take the best from both.
Along the way, I will give you some Photoshop tips, too. The first thing you’ll need to know is how to manage your drawing in Photoshop and which are the best ways to prepare it for Illustrator.

Interactive maps are a fantastic way to present geographic data to your visitors. Libraries like Google Maps and Open Street Maps are a popular choice to do this and they excel at visualizing street-level data. However, for small-scale maps, SVG maps are often a better option. They are lightweight, fully customizable and are not encumbered by any licensing restrictions.

It’s possible to find a number of SVG maps released under permissible licenses in the Wikimedia Commons. Unfortunately, it’s likely that you will eventually find these options lacking. The map you need may not exist, may be out of date (as borders change), or may not be well-formatted for web use. This article will explain how to create your own SVG maps using Natural Earth data and open source tools. You will then be able to create SVG maps of any area of the world, using any projection, at any resolution. As an illustration, we will create an SVG world map.

Using templates in the browser is becoming more and more widespread. Moving application logic from the server to the client, and the increasing usage of MVC-like patterns (model–view–controller) inspired templates to embrace the browser. This used to be a server-side only affair, but templates are actually very powerful and expressive in client-side development as well.

Image Credit: Viktor Hertz
Why Would You Use It? In general, leveraging templates is a great way to separate markup and logic in views, and to maximize code reusability and maintainability.

If you have a problem and need a solution for it, chances are high that a JavaScript library or jQuery plugin exists that was created to solve this very problem. Such libraries are always great to have in your bookmarks or in your local folders, especially if you aren’t a big fan of cross-browser debugging.
A JavaScript library isn’t always the best solution: it should never be a single point of failure for any website, and neither should a website rely on JavaScript making the content potentially inaccessible.

We’d like to believe that we use established design patterns for common elements on the Web. We know what buttons should look like, how they should behave and how to design the Web forms that rely on those buttons.
And yet, broken forms, buttons that look nothing like buttons, confusing navigation elements and more are rampant on the Web. It’s a boulevard of broken patterns out there.
Further Reading on SmashingMag: Taking Pattern Libraries To The Next Level An Exploration Of Carousel Usage On Mobile E-Commerce Websites An In-Depth Overview Of Living Style Guide Tools Boost Your Mobile E-Commerce Sales With Mobile Design Patterns This got me thinking about the history and purpose of design patterns and when they should and should not be used.